As a young child raised in rural Saguenay Lac-St-Jean, Québec, I thought it was perfectly normal to have nuns or priests in the family. My paternal grandmother was one of nine siblings and two of her sisters were in religious life in Québec. We knew them as Matante Lucille (Soeur Sainte-Lucille-du-Sauveur with the Congrégation des Soeurs du Bon-Pasteur) and Matante Blanche-Alice (Soeur St-Bruno with the Soeurs Antonienne the Marie). So, as a young child might, I accepted their presence in our extended family life the same way I accepted most things — it was how things were.

As an archivist who spends much of her days piecing together stories from fragments, I do regret that I never heard their vocation stories. No one in the family ever shared what drew them to religious life. What did it mean to my great-grandparents to see two of their children answer the call to religious life? Why would I, as a young child, have even thought to ask? Those stories, if they were ever told, have been lost to time and memory.

For many Catholic families, especially immigrant families who had carried their faith across borders and nurtured it in new, unfamiliar soil, a child’s religious vocation was a source of profound pride and spiritual consolation. When a family could claim not just one but several members in consecrated life, it spoke to something deeper than coincidence: a household steeped in prayer, sacrifice, service, and devotion. Few families in the history of the Diocese of Burlington could rival the remarkable vocation story of the Thibault family of St. Albans and thanks to the archival record, their story has not been lost.

Amédé Thibault was born in 1865 and Marie Rose de Lima (Délima) Nolin in 1866, both in Québec. The couple married in Iberville, Québec, in 1892, and like so many French-Canadian families of their generation, soon made the journey south into Vermont. They settled in St. Albans, a city already home to a thriving French-Canadian community drawn by employment with the Central Vermont Grand Trunk Railway and its associated industries. The Thibaults became parishioners of Holy Guardian Angels Parish, where the Sisters of the Holy Cross had been serving since 1889, providing Catholic education to the children of the parish’s bilingual community.

It was in this environment of faith and religious witness that Amédé and Délima raised their seven children —
all daughters who entered the same religious order of women that had been part of their Catholic upbringing at Holy Angels.

The eldest to enter was M. Alice Rose, who joined the order in 1912 and took the religious name Sister Mary Hubert. Her six sisters followed in steady succession over the next 15 years: M. Emma Elodie became Sister Marie Thérèse d’Alb; M. Anne Marcelline, Sister Marie Camille; M. Agnes Antoinette, Sister Marie Dolorita; M. Alma, Sister Marie Opportune; Marguerite Marie took the name Sister Rose-Alma; and the youngest, Thérèse Médie, entered in 1927 as Sister Mary Rita. The seven sisters were stationed at convents across New England. Sisters Marie Hubert and Thérèse d’Alb were together in Manchester, New Hampshire, while Sisters Marie Camille and Marie Dolorita served in Nashua. Sister Marie Opportune was in Groton, Connecticut, Sister Rose-Alma in Rochester, New Hampshire, and Sister Marie Rita in Springfield, Massachusetts.

By the early 1960s, the seven Thibault sisters could look back on a combined total of more than three centuries of service to the Church and the Sisters of the Holy Cross. They had taught in schools, served in parishes, and dedicated their lives to prayer and community. A 1964 article in the Vermont Catholic Tribune highlighted the family’s extraordinary record, noting that the religious vocation extended beyond Amédé and Délima’s daughters. Three of their nieces in Winooski as well as a great niece as professed religious in the Holy Cross order, a testament to a family culture of faith that spanned generations.

The devotion of the Thibault parents did not go unrecognized. At the age of 93, Amédé was presented with the Benemerenti Medal by Bishop Joyce in 1958, a papal honor awarded for distinguished service to the Catholic Church. It was a fitting tribute to a father who had given all of his daughters to God. Although Délima had passed away in 1944, Amédé lived to the age of 96, until the winter of 1961. In his final illness, two of his daughters, Sisters Marie Thérèse d’Alb and Marie Rita, received special permissions to return to St. Albans to care for him.

The story of the Thibault family is preserved in the collections of the Archives of the Diocese of Burlington through parish records, news articles, sacramental records, and photographs that allow us to piece together this remarkable and faithful family within our diocesan history. Their story reminds us that vocations do not arise in isolation, rather, are cultivated in homes where faith is lived daily, in parishes where religious life is visible and valued, and in communities where the witness of consecrated women and men inspires the next generation to say, “yes.” For the Thibault family, that one “yes” was echoed seven times over.

Sources

“Seven Sisters in Same Order.” Vermont Catholic Tribune, September 25, 1964.

“Sisters of the Holy Cross in Holy Angels Parish.” In History of Holy Guardian Angels Parish, St. Albans, Vermont, 1872–1997. St. Albans, VT: Holy Guardian Angels Parish, 1997.